by | Sep 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
I thought I needed to try harder at meditation. What I really needed was the Holy Spirit to enlighten me.
I’ve always wanted to be spiritual, but I have trouble believing things,” I said, smiling nervously at the robe-clad Zen Buddhism teacher. We were sitting together in a small room for a one-on-one conversation about my Zen meditation practice.
He chuckled. “So, I guess Zen is perfect for you.”
The year was 2011, and I was 36 years old. I had been practicing Zen Buddhism for three years and had traveled to Kentucky to attend my first meditation retreat, a weekend event held at a Zen center near Lexington. The retreat schedule was tough. We sat in meditation from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., broken up by short periods of walking meditation, meals, and chores. Everything was to be done in silence.
Zen was the latest chapter in my lifelong spiritual quest. That quest had begun during my teenage years, when I realized that my Hindu ancestry—passed down by Indian immigrant parents—need not dictate my own faith. As I became aware of alternative belief systems, I realized that I was an agnostic: I honestly didn’t know what to believe. So I dropped the Hindu label and committed to discovering for myself the ultimate truth.
Growing up in Houston, I learned the basics of Christianity through friends and neighbors. I also spent part of my childhood in the United Kingdom, where Christian prayer, hymns, and sermons were part of regular school activities. My Hindu parents always spoke respectfully about Christian beliefs. They would go (and encourage me to go) to church with friends when invited.
But it wasn’t until I got to college that I came to know Jesus through my evangelical Christian friends. I observed how their faith gave them peace and strength during difficult times. And every time I heard about …
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by | Sep 19, 2023 | Uncategorized
Christian aid organization says it is not and defends former director sentenced to prison in Israel.
Senator Chuck Grassley is concerned that World Vision International may have funded terrorism with US taxpayers’ money.
The long-serving legislator from Iowa sent the Christian humanitarian aid organization a letter last month asking for answers to a number of questions about funding, current programs, and accountability. World Vision received $491 million from US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2022.
“Congress and the American people deserve transparency with respect to the steps World Vision has taken to ensure taxpayer money is used as intended and not for illegal activity,” Grassley wrote. “Please provide answers.”
The humanitarian organization told CT that it sent a reply to Grassley on September 9. On the larger point, the group is unequivocal: “World Vision does not support any form of terrorism.”
The senator’s inquiry comes a year after a World Vision employee was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Israel. According to prosecutors, the former director of aid to Gaza diverted $50 million meant for hungry children and farmers to Hamas, which the US State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Little of the evidence used to convict Mohammed el-Halabi was made available to the public, beyond a confession that Halabi’s lawyers say was coerced. Four United Nations experts raised concerns about what they called “egregious” violations of Halabi’s right to a fair trial.
World Vision continues to defend the former Gaza aid director. The organization says his conviction was unjust and the Israeli court’s ruling is “in sharp contrast to the evidence and facts of the case.”
In 2016, the humanitarian aid organization …
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by | Sep 18, 2023 | Uncategorized
Music experts say we don’t need more “manly songs,” but we do need to help lower voices find their place
The 1910 edition of the YMCA songbook, Manly Songs for Christian Men, has no foreword or introduction, just a brief explanation on the title page: “A collection of Sacred Songs adapted to the needs of Male Singers. For use in Adult Bible Classes, Y.M.C.A. Meetings and all gatherings of men for religious work and worship.”
The first song is “For the Man of Galilee,” which opens with these lines:
Shout aloud the stirring summons
O’er the land from sea to sea
Men are wanted, men of courage,
For the Man of Galilee.
The song alternates between accented, march-like sections in unison and four-part harmonies. The music gives tenors the chance to project at the top of their range, and the basses get to land on a resonant low A-flat at the end of each verse. It’s a rousing march in the tradition of 19th-century men’s choirs, once fixtures of many European and American communities.
But today, if you ask leaders and pastors about the status of congregational singing in their churches, most will confirm that many men just don’t participate. Some blame musical style, some blame lyrical content, and others blame generalized “feminization” of the American church.
Recent interest in the state of masculinity, explored in a raft of op-eds, books, and podcasts, has reinvigorated a perennial discussion about why so many men don’t sing in church. While there has been plenty of speculation about the “effeminacy” of contemporary worship music and its effects on men in churches, most men’s reasons for singing are not so ideological.
The lower rate of musical participation among men likely has little to do with a dearth of manly marches in today’s churches. …
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by | Sep 18, 2023 | Uncategorized
Even with his new faith coalition and bolder pro-life convictions, few evangelicals are stepping away from the former president and GOP frontrunner.
Ron DeSantis is putting his Christian convictions forward as he tries to gain ground with evangelical voters, who continue to favor former president Donald Trump.
“I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God,” the Florida governor told hundreds gathered for the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit on Friday in Washington, DC, repeating one of his favorite Bible lines about putting on “the full armor of God.”
“When you stand up for what’s right in this day and age, that is not going to be cost-free. … And it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition. It gives you the foundation to know that all the insults, all the nonsense they throw at you, ultimately doesn’t matter because you are aiming higher.”
The summit came one day after DeSantis, who is Catholic, launched his Faith and Family Coalition. The group features endorsements from 70 pastors in the early primary states of Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. The coalition invites supporters to back DeSantis through “faith and prayer.”
Trump still leads the GOP race by a wide margin—a straw poll of over 500 in attendance at the DC summit had the former president over DeSantis, 64 percent to 27 percent—but a slice of evangelical voters are being swayed by what they see as stronger character and tougher stances on pro-life issues from other candidates.
“Former president Trump, despite all the merits and many good things he did, is relatively weak in comparison to other candidates, and especially governor DeSantis, on these issues, which are core issues for social …
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by | Sep 15, 2023 | Uncategorized
Why the call to good works goes hand in hand with the free gift of grace.
I recently had a gospel conversation with an agnostic woman who is seriously considering the claims of Christ. On a purely intellectual level, she finds the Christian worldview compelling. She admits that Christian theism offers a better rational explanation of the natural world and a better grounding for moral virtue than the more rigid brand of atheism she formerly espoused.
But a deeper, more existential issue bothers her still. Some years ago, when she went through a very public personal crisis, none of the people in her life who professed to be Christians said or did anything to minister to her.
“I was very clearly crying out for help,” she said, “but none of the Christians I know offered to lift a finger—or even an encouraging word—to help me in my time of need.”
Like many others in our secular age, this young woman grew disenchanted with a version of the Christian faith that is often talked about, but rarely lived out in practice. Like the apostle James, she could ask, “What good is it … if someone claims to have faith but does not have works?” (James 2:14, CSB).
Unfortunately, many within American evangelicalism practice what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” Since Christ has “paid it all,” they act as if nothing is owed: no repentance, obedience, or service to neighbor. The authors of The Doctrine of Good Works: Recovering a Neglected Protestant Teaching seek to expose the flawed theological assumptions behind this type of negligent Christian witness. “Good works,” the authors insist, “are actually integral to the Good News.”
Jointly written by a renowned systematic theologian (Thomas McCall), a New Testament …
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